The eruption of democratic defiance among Arabs has discredited
neoconservatives and al-Qaeda alike, shattering their shared assumption
that Muslims need violent prodding to reclaim their dignity. Ten weeks
of protests won Tunisians and Egyptians what 10 years of bloodshed
could not purchase for Pax Americana or its archenemy in Iraq or
Afghanistan: a spirit of solidarity among millions—secularists,
mainstream Islamists, young men, old women—eager to rebuild their
countries.

U.S. policymakers should learn from these events that the Muslim
impulse for modernity and freedom is hindered, not helped, by Western
military intervention. And they should learn soon. The U.S. “Af-Pak” war
is accelerating the self-destruction of the world’s second largest, and
only nuclear, Muslim country.

Murder and Blasphemy

Pakistan’s lurch toward the abyss is exemplified by the recent murders of two politicians: Salman Taseer, a secularist killed in January, and Shahbaz Bhatti,
a Christian killed in early March. Opposition to the ruling party’s
proposed changes of the blasphemy law underlay the attacks. The law,
created in the 1980s by Pakistan’s military dictator, Zia-ul-Haq, and
later criticized [.pdf] by the United States, was aimed at fostering Wahhabism amid the U.S.-backed “jihad” in Afghanistan.

Consistent with Wahhabi dogma, the blasphemy law reflects the
opposite of what the Prophet Muhammad preached. Whereas Muhammad spared the
lives of people who tried to poison, starve, and even kill him, the
blasphemy law prescribes death for anyone who makes “derogatory” remarks
about the Prophet. And whereas the Qur’an explicitly acknowledges the validity of other faiths and decrees that acceptance of Islam is a choice, Pakistan’s extremists target Muslim “heretics” and non-Muslims for destruction.

More troubling than the murders is the soft support for—if not
outright approval of—the law among the Pakistani public. Lawyers, once
hailed by Western media as heroes of Pakistani liberalism, raucously supported the alleged murderer of Taseer. The killer had been inspired by one of the many religious leaders who had railed against changes to the law in protests that drew tens of thousands.

Amid the backlash, Pakistan’s fragile prime minister abandoned the
proposed amendments. That did not appease extremists, who then killed
Bhatti, the only Christian cabinet member, also for opposing the blasphemy law.

Fearing Psychosis or the Taliban

Following that attack, a columnist in Pakistan’s largest English daily opined that
extremists had little to fear: “Because who are they afraid of? Not the
state, not the government, not the law. All three have simply
capitulated in front of the psychosis that is ever so often being
presented to us through TV talk shows, mosques, and cyber space as the
‘true faith.’”

But why has this “psychosis” taken root in a country home to Sufism,
Islam’s mystical branch? Pro-Taliban political parties fared poorly in 2008 national and provincial elections. Even in the tribal north, they received little support. And in a late 2009 poll, national support for the Taliban registered at a dismal 4 percent after the group launched attacks against civilians.

The answer lies not in any one feature of Pakistani society, but
rather in frustration with a war that has stretched the weak strands of
that society to a breaking point.

One of those strands is the Pakistani military’s support for the Taliban. Its justification—creating “strategic depth”
against India—seems absurd, as it is the radicals who have achieved
strategic depth inside Pakistan. But this policy, crafted by Zia’s
military regime, went unchallenged because of another national weakness:
Pakistan’s democracy.

Benazir Bhutto, the former two-term prime minister killed by extremists in 2008, confided to
writer Tariq Ali during her first term in 1988 that she was “powerless”
against the military. Her own father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, was hung by Zia in 1979.

Driving a Humvee Through Pakistan’s Heart

Instead of working around these vulnerabilities, however, U.S. commanders drove a Humvee through them.

Desperate to salvage the war after the distraction of Iraq, the
United States intensified its attacks, to which the Taliban responded by
seizing swaths of land in Pakistan. The United States then ordered Pakistan to respond swiftly. The Pakistani army’s harried campaign caused massive [.pdf]
civilian displacement and complicated its “strategic depth” fantasies.
In retaliation for U.S. and Pakistani pressure, local Taliban began
launching suicide attacks, which are now a regular feature of Pakistani life. At the same time, U.S. drone strikes increased inside Pakistan as the civilian government lamely protested.

Taken together, these actions turned the militants’ ire on the country and cratered the government’s credibility.

Demoralized by the impotence of their institutions in the face of
foreign power, Pakistanis prefer victimhood to a vigorous response. The
war has made it easy to deflect attention and outsource blame.

Media outlets vie with one another to see who can finger the most
foreign intelligence agencies for attacks that bear the Taliban’s
imprimatur. That U.S. intelligence and mercenaries indeed operate on Pakistani soil—a fact the U.S. media deliberately concealed in the Raymond Davis case—drives the fury and paranoia that has peaked with the CIA agent’s capture.

In this poisoned atmosphere, many Pakistanis have adopted an
us-against-them mentality. If the United States supports something—such
as changes to the blasphemy law—then it must be a U.S. plot.
Pakistanis who support such changes then must be agents of the CIA, who
after all operate secretly across the country.

If not for the sprawling and blundering U.S. brand of war, might
Pakistanis have revolted against their regime and its Taliban creation
in a Tunisia-like moment? History brooks no “ifs.” But alongside the
established cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab-led awakening
suggests that foreign bullying impedes native progress. The movement has
flourished where regimes were lavished with U.S. support (Tunisia,
Egypt, Bahrain) but flagged where regimes are lashed with U.S. threats
(Syria, Iran). Pakistan is both lavished and lashed, which only
heightens the hysteria.

The United States must abandon its schizophrenic approach to
Pakistan. It should end violations of sovereignty and the flow of money
to elites that turn sovereignty into satrapy. While the Obama
administration may find it useful to spy and strike inside Pakistan to
help the war, “winning” in Afghanistan is not worth losing Pakistan to
resentment-fueled chaos.

America’s endless war is not the cause of Pakistan’s malaise. But it is preventing the emergence of a cure.

I don,t follow his views as I all the problems could be solved peacefully but blood calls for revenge.
As my Iraki friends in Germany told over one million irakis have been killed by black water and the strategy which was used in Afghanistan is being implied in Pakistan.
For me there thousands of question:
1) 9/11 none was blamed to be afghani or Iraki. Taleban have asked to give proof that Osama bin laden is envoled and they were hand over or he should be tried in international court.
2) they have destroyed whole of irak for their hegemony Saddam was also CIA agent. Why?
3) NWFP there grows no explosives who supply them,
4) who is supplying suicide belt.
5) who is giving money to these people etc.
To my mind CIA and RAW are behind them. In Pakistan everything in in control of CIA and met agriculturist in Berlin who came for research his boss Dr. x was sent to jail for two years and then free and had to report every year to CIA in Lahore.

bogi666

These invasions are all about graft and corruption which is facilitated by the Pentagon due to its worldwide access to foreign bank accounts for money laundering and not possible to audit due to language differences and secret banking law.

RJk

Blasphemy law wasn't created by Zia. He was a POS, without a doubt, but please research the colonial British origins of this law. Zia added the death penalty to the already existing blasphemy law.

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam writes about Islam and America at his Web site, Crossing the Crescent. A regular Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, he has also been published in AltMuslim.com, CounterPunch, and TheNation.com. He lives in New York.